Startups & Venture · August 2026
Hayden Brown arguing that Upwork's edge in the AI era is verified work-history data, not flashy self-presentation or AI-generated applications. She frames this as a meritocratic counterpoint to AI-inflated resumes and proposals.
Transcript
I mean, these are the big questions, and they're the right ones because we are seeing, you know, spam job proposals and applications. We really just want to put people's own interests. And needs on steroids, and then have that expressed through the hiring process and the recruitment process that we're supporting them with, including filtering out all of the AI kind of slop and noise that is creeping in now that these tools are so widespread.
Right. I guess if I'm a job applicant, I guess I can create a lot of different versions of my application to a lot of different jobs that may or may not be right for me. And I may not even know what I'm doing. And I guess the same thing can happen on the other side about posting for jobs where if we can find a needle in the haystack, we'll do it, but otherwise we're just sort of testing the water.
Yeah. And I think that's one of the main values that we see being so enduring, even in the AI era for Upwork specifically and our customers is, you know, the problem we've always solved for them is giving them real, tangible, accurate data around who can do what. It's real data from our platform, observing people doing work and delivering for customers with dollars attached. So this is the most verified work history data really in the world, and it's at scale across 18 million freelancers that were active in the last year. This type of data is what then gives customers confidence in making that hire, not noise that was created by an AI agent applying for them, not these empty promises or claims about their expertise. It's actually stripping us back to like what does the data say in terms of who's good at what? And frankly, advancing this meritocratic idea of it shouldn't be about who has the best agent or who sounds the most shiny on paper, but really who has the data and the experience to demonstrate that they can do the work that's required.
That in the trenches data Hayden cites illustrates how human in the loop is actually unfolding in an AI world. 23% of businesses moving work back to humans from AI. So how does Upwork engage with the big AI companies, including open source players in China? And what does it mean that freelancers with AI skills earn 34% more? We'll talk about that and more after the break. Stay with us.
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